Talk:Etta Place

Film reference

I removed the following line from the "timeline accepted by historians" section:

• 1969: Actress Katharine Ross portrays Etta Place in the Western film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

This info hasn't got anything to do with the historic facts of Etta Place's life. It's trivia, at best. Rien Post (talk) 19:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Disappearance - no evidence?

Is there any reliable evidence that Etta Place mysteriously disappeared (ie physically went missing, as opposed to disappeared from extant historical records)? 74.63.84.101 (talk) 09:08, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

No she just dropped out of the story, in terms of known historical records. However she was probably deliberately elusive and wary, for the rest of her life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valhalan (talk • contribs) 07:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Etta Place and Ann Bassett

I agree with the findings of Dr.Kyle of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that Etta PLace and Ann Bassett are one and the same. The latest facial recognition technology, designed mainly for the banks and automated cash machines, is also insisting that the two are the same person. I think researchers are missing something here -- somebody has been borrowing Bassett's name while she was in South America as Place. This "somebody" also went to jail under Bassett's name, presumably to avoid shaming her own family. Researchers need to examine any extant prison records (inc photos?) in order to identify the "someone", cast a clearer light on this whole thing, and in particular to straighten out the inconsistency between Kyle's findings and Bassett's history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valhalan (talk • contribs) 07:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

There is more than just the record of Bassett's imprisonment in 1903 while Place was in South America to indicate that they were not the same person. There's also her 1903-1909 marriage to explain away. Her husband would seem to have to have been in on the deception. Ann Bassett was living in Brown's Park for much of that time so it would seem like her neighbours should have noticed if she'd been replaced by someone else. Here's a link to an audio interview with Ann Bassett's biographer Linda Wommack in which she describes other evidence that puts Etta Place and Ann Bassett in two different places simultaneously even before Place left for South America: http://www.chronicleoftheoldwest.com/show_302-linda_wommack-ann_bassett.shtml Simon d Simon d (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I agree with Linda's facts and also her reasoning and deduction. However there is still Kyle's findings, which seem to say the opposite. These situations make third parties like me almost throw our hands up in despair. Either the science is wrong, or the coverup of Bassett and Place being the same person, goes way deeper. (Valhalan (talk) 03:25, 10 February 2011 (UTC))

I agree that it's very strange that Sundance's girlfriend Etta looked so much like Butch's ex-girlfriend Ann that Dr Kyle's computer facial analysis found them to be the same person. I found that finding so striking that I added it to the article, which had previously claimed that they didn't look much alike. Comparing the photos of each of them visually (here's the photo of Ann Bassett: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-oldwest/AnnBassett-500.jpg) they don't look to me like they're so similar that they must be the same person, and so I can see why people are sceptical, but I think that could be because Ann in her photo looks a bit older and has bit more flesh than Etta in her photo. The photos could well be of the same person taken several years apart (I don't know when the photo of Ann was actually taken).

I'm also tempted to throw my hands up in despair given the contradictions in the evidence. But there is another possible explanation, just a bizarre one. I've read that it's been suggested that there was more than one Etta Place, that it was an alias used for a series of girlfriends. Ann Bassett would have been the Etta in the DeYoung portrait and sailed to Argentina in 1901. According to this hypothesis, she then returned to the US in 1902 and was replaced by another woman who returned to Argentina with Sundance as the new Etta. Ann Bassett returned to Brown's Park at that time in 1902, after having been away for over a year. This explanation would resolve all the instances of Ann and Etta being in two places at once except one: that Ethel Place signed into a boarding house in New York City on Feb 1 1901, the day before the Vernal Express newspaper in Utah reported that Ann Bassett had left town that morning on the stage to Texas. But local newspapers are notoriously unreliable about facts, so I don't think that's a completely fatal objection.

The alternative would have to be that Dr Kyle's facial analysis was in some way flawed. Without his analysis, the problems with the theory that Ann Bassett was Etta Place are so severe that I wouldn't entertain it as a possibility. Simon d (talk) 15:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

What did they do for passports in those days? They were taking mugshots in the jails years before 1901. What about Etta's passport application and photo? What address was given? Where are the birth certificate and references whe might have needed? (204.112.57.168 (talk) 22:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC))

There were passports, but they weren't needed. Until the First World War it was usual to travel between countries without a passport. See the articles Passport and United States passport. Simon d (talk) 18:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

How do we know that Place didn't apply for one at some time? Who did this research work? I would like to follow up on this angle. (204.112.56.25 (talk) 04:53, 20 February 2011 (UTC))

It seems to me that Etta Place could have been an alias used by various female companions of Butch and Sundance at various times, including Ann Bassett and Eunice Gray, as disinformation to confuse Pinkerton and law enforcement agencies, or even just as a joke. It could have also given various girlfriends plausible deniability regarding the gang's and their own movements. That, in turn, leads to the contradictions in the historical record. Those contradictions were purposely set up for the gang's and the women's protection. Even Robert Longabaugh may be correct in his belief that Etta was his aunt or even his own mother, but because an otherwise nameless prostitute was "Etta" for some period of time, its impossible to link her directly to the gang from the historical record. The women who were Etta or would have known the truth to the story had all passed away by the 1960s, so we will probably never know the exact timeline of the Ettas. 165.2.186.10 (talk) 18:52, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess that when most of us ask", "Who was Etta Place?", what we really mean is, "Who is the woman in the DeYoung portrait?". And of course there is only one answer to that, if and when it is finally discovered. (63.230.25.213 (talk) 17:32, 16 June 2011 (UTC))